CHANDIGARH: Taking up the plea of whistleblower Indian Forest Services officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi to recall the orders to form a special investigation team (SIT) into the suspicious death of a forest official in 2009, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday issued a notice to the Haryana government. The court, however, refused to grant any stay on its February 10 orders without hearing the state and the deceased officer’s father Ram Pal Tomar, who has also been told to file his reply on the contentions raised by Chaturvedi.
The case has been fixed for March 13 for further hearing.
Chaturvedi is currently posted as deputy secretary at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is keen on having him in his office to fight corruption.
In its February 10 orders, the HC had directed the Haryana DGP to constitute a SIT to probe the death of a forest range officer in 2009 following his father’s plea that his son ended life due to harassment by Chaturvedi. Forest range officer Sanjeev Tomar, 35, was found dead at his official residence in Jhajjar on December 14, 2009.
Claiming that the high court had not heard him, Chaturvedi said the order made observations about some serious allegations against him, which would impact his reputation and service conditions. In his plea, Chaturvedi submitted that Haryana’s highest political executives had already tried to implicate him in false cases. He also submitted that former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had tried to block his central deputation in June 2012 by deliberately ignoring clean chits given to him by the police in the same case.
“Therefore, it is strongly apprehended that if the impugned order is not immediately recalled, the same would be used again to harm/block my career prospects,” he pleaded.
The officer also submitted that the Haryana government deliberately did not inform the court about his pending plea before the Supreme Court for a CBI probe into the matter. He had sought a central probe on the grounds that his name was allegedly maliciously linked to Tomar’s death and that a closure report was not being filed despite repeated investigations concluding that there was no evidence against him.
TOI | Feb 21, 2015
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